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Web Review, Week 2025-41

Friday, 10 October 2025  |  Kevin Ottens

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2025-41.


Citizen Protest Halts Chat Control

Tags: tech, law, surveillance

Well done everyone. This bullet was dodged… for now! This kind of fever comes back regularly unfortunately.

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/citizen-protest-halts-chat-control-breyer-celebrates-major-victory-for-digital-privacy/


In Praise of RSS and Controlled Feeds of Information

Tags: tech, social-media, rss

Another nice one about the power of RSS and why it’s an important technology.

https://blog.burkert.me/posts/in_praise_of_syndication/


Windows 11 removes all bypass methods for Microsoft account setup, removing local accounts

Tags: tech, windows, surveillance, foss

Probably preaching to the choir here… but if you still got Windows in your life between the end of 10 and what they’re doing to 11, it’s really high time you ditch it. Come over to the Free Software operating systems side. It might require an initial effort but it won’t stab you in the back like this.

https://alternativeto.net/news/2025/10/windows-11-now-blocks-all-microsoft-account-bypasses-during-setup/


Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships Explained

Tags: tech, vpn, business, privacy

Some relationships here are definitely shady. Be careful who you trust with your traffic.

https://windscribe.com/blog/the-vpn-relationship-map/


Apertus: a fully open, transparent, multilingual language model

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, foss

ETH Zurich keeps making progress on its model. It’s exciting and nice to see an ethical offering develop in that space. It shows that when there is political will it can be treated as proper infrastructure.

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2025/09/press-release-apertus-a-fully-open-transparent-multilingual-language-model.html


WireGuard topologies for self-hosting at home

Tags: tech, networking, vpn, wireguard, self-hosting

Interesting breakdown of a possible organisation for accessing self-hosted hardware at home through wireguard.

https://garrido.io/notes/wireguard-topologies-for-self-hosting-at-home/


UUIDv47 — UUIDv7-in / UUIDv4-out

Tags: tech, uuid, privacy, performance

Interesting idea, trying to bridge the best of both UUID options.

https://uuidv47.stateless.me/


Python 3.14.0

Tags: tech, python, foss

It’s out now, this is a big one with quite a few interesting features. Let’s see how it’s used in practice.

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3140/


Python 3.14 Is Here. How Fast Is It?

Tags: tech, python, benchmarking, performance

First rough benchmarks for CPython 3.14. It looks like the JIT isn’t giving much improvement on the cases explored, the free threading on the other hand is a clear advantage for multithreaded cases. Of course as usual Pypy is still way faster. That said, like anything else: first measure in your own context before taking any decision.

https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/python-3-14-is-here-how-fast-is-it


C++26: range support for std::optional

Tags: tech, c++, design, api

It’s kind of an unusual design choice… This is subtle, I think I’m still a bit on the fence regarding this one.

https://www.sandordargo.com/blog/2025/10/08/cpp26-range-support-for-std-optional


std::ranges may not deliver the performance that you expect

Tags: tech, c++, benchmarking, performance

As usual, you need to measure before you jump to conclusion…

https://lemire.me/blog/2025/10/05/stdranges-may-not-deliver-the-performance-that-you-expect/


Const, Move and RVO

Tags: tech, c++

Reminder that there are a few cases where you might not want your variables declared as const.

https://www.cppstories.com/2017/01/const-move-and-rvo/?m=1


Why we didn’t rewrite our feed handler in Rust

Tags: tech, c++, rust, type-systems

An illustration of why C++ can still be a relevant choice in new code. It all depends on the contraints you have for a given problem.

https://databento.com/blog/why-we-didnt-rewrite-our-feed-handler-in-rust


Cancelling async Rust

Tags: tech, rust, asynchronous

Interesting post which gives plenty of insights on how async Rust is designed and behaves.

https://sunshowers.io/posts/cancelling-async-rust/


A case for learning GPU programming with a compute-first mindset

Tags: tech, gpu, shader, teaching, learning, debugging

An interesting way to approach the topic of GPU programming nowadays. It might indeed make more sense nowadays than reaching for putting pixels on screen as a first objective.

https://themaister.net/blog/2025/10/05/a-case-for-learning-gpu-programming-with-a-compute-first-mindset/


The Single Responsibility Principle

Tags: tech, design, craftsmanship, quality

An explanation about where the SRP comes from and what it really means. It’s very often misunderstood or overlooked.

https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/05/08/SingleReponsibilityPrinciple.html


ATDD From the Trenches

Tags: tech, tests, tdd, atdd

A little introductory article about putting an ATDD cycle in place for your development.

https://www.infoq.com/articles/atdd-from-the-trenches/


Programmer Test Principles

Tags: tech, tests, tdd

A bit old but still relevant. Don’t focus on tools or the fashion “du jour”, instead have a set of timeless principles and evaluate your work against them.

https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/programmer-test-principles-d01c064d7934


Concerns about TDD

Tags: tech, tests, tdd, learning, teaching

This is definitely a skill which is hard to teach an learn. When it sticks it brings really nice results though…

https://ronjeffries.com/articles/020-01ff/tdd-issues/


The static risk fallacy

Tags: tech, security, risk

Interesting take. Indeed risks shouldn’t be considered in isolation. They actually compound and that can add up fairly quickly.

https://chrisbeckman.dev/posts/static-risk-fallacy


Products Over Projects

Tags: tech, project-management, product-management, organization

I wouldn’t frame it as always superior (I’d argue the article falls a bit in this trap). Still this can sometimes be an alternative to driving everything purely on project mode. Some organizations would benefit from such a change of perspective other less so.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/products-over-projects.html


Better Agile Adoptions

Tags: tech, agile, team, change, organization, management

I think the Open Agile Adoption ideas have been unfortunately unnoticed. It’s thus hard to tell if it would have been fairly efficient. What’s sure though is that the widespread mandate approach used during the past decade does a disservice to teams.

https://www.infoq.com/articles/open-agile-adoption-1/


How to Reward Agile Teams

Tags: tech, team, hr, economics, project-management

I’m a bit on the fence regarding this article. That being said there’s something I like about it: it’s not always purely about money. It’s also a good reminder that if the reward is in monetary form it’s almost impossible to not somehow alter team dynamics with it.

https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-to-reward-agile-teams


Seeing like a software company

Tags: tech, organization, management

Interesting view… This explains quite well why most organizations have both formal and informal processes. I’m not sure I agree that the informal will always be fought against by management though. I’ve seen clever management which accepts the informal processes as long as it doesn’t harm the organization.

https://www.seangoedecke.com/seeing-like-a-software-company/



Bye for now!